Marathon’s bitcoin production growth surges, bolstered by higher transaction fees

In a bitcoin production and mining operation update published yesterday, Marathon Digital Holdings announced that it produced a company-record 1,853 bitcoins ($81.2 million at current prices) last month.

The firm mined 12,852 bitcoins ($563.4 million) last year, more than tripling its mining output from 4,144 BTC in 2022. Marathon also increased its average operational hash rate by 18% month-over-month to 22.4 EH/s.

“In December, we increased our energized hash rate 4% to 24.7 exahashes and extended our lead as the largest publicly traded bitcoin miner in North America,” Marathon’s chairman and CEO, Fred Thiel, said in a press release. “We continue to target 30% growth in energized hash rate in 2024 and with the recently announced acquisition of the two sites from Generate Capital, which is expected to close in January 2024, we expect to reach 50 exahashes in the next 18 to 24 months.”

Marathon attributes its production growth directly to higher transaction fees on the Bitcoin network. “MaraPool collected more than 380 BTC in transaction fees or 22% of BTC production, up from 12% of production last month,” the company noted.

Marathon holds over 15,000 bitcoins as of Dec. 31, 2023.